The first time I took the GMAT I scored a 730 (Q49 V40 - October 2010) and was fairly satisfied - but hoping to apply to a decent Finance PhD school I decided to give the GMAT another go.
The second time I took the GMAT I scored a 720 (Q47 V42 - July 2011). I was disappointed to say the least. I went through the
Manhattan GMAT guides as well as all of
the Official Guide sets. While I expected a marginal increase in the Verbal score I was definitely not expecting a drop in the Quant score. The problems suddenly seemed very foreign and while I had time to spare the first time I was struggling to keep pace the second time. About 5 of the problems were pretty standard GMAT math, but the rest were just completely foreign to me. I'm not sure if they updated their test bank or what but I thought the GMAT quant was a killer this time around.
I've read various threads and tips but I was hoping someone could help me understand what happened, and suggest resources to improve the quant for my particular situation. I am really hoping to break into Q50. To be fair I don't consider myself particularly good at math. I'm hoping to brute force it by having experience with every type of problem offered - which I thought I would have covered going through the official guides.